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suraj.sun sends an excerpt from this post made by a developer who decided to try out Amazon's App Store, only to be disappointed with the experience:
"Amazon's biggest feature by far, has been their Free App Of The Day promotion. Publicly their terms say that they pay developers 20% of the asking price of an app, even when they give it away free. To both consumers and naive developers alike, this seems like a big chance to make something rare in the Android world: real money. But here's the dirty secret Amazon don't want you to know, they don't pay developers a single cent. ... Amazon is being predatory here, and asking developers (who are often desperate for exposure) to give away their app, in order to promote Amazon. In the end we agreed that we had entered the world of Android development as an experiment, and it would seem silly not to add more data to the experiment we were conducting. The day of our promotion came: ... Amazon gave away 101,491 copies of our app! At this point, we had a few seconds of excitement as well; had we mis-read the email and really earned $54,800 in one day? We would have done if our public agreement was in place, but we can now confirm that thanks to Amazon's secret back-door deals, we made $0 on that day. That's right, over 100,000 apps given away, $0 made."

It's amazing how many problems and complaints would be solved if every ToS, EULA, and online agreement required some kind of electronic signature to be valid. It should be something that would take more than a quick mouse-click to apply. Also if any amendments to existing agreements had to come with a statement to the effect of, "The amended agreement is identical to the previous one in every way, except the following:" which could be covered in a couple of paragraphs, rather than reading tens of pages of legalese to find what has changed.

The entire notion of a contract or agreement is that both parties fully understand it and both parties voluntarily agree to it. The fact that most people neither read nor understand most agreements and EULAs and ToS's means that this system is failing and needs to be changed. Unless of course we are prepared to reject the idea of informed, voluntary consent to mutually satisfying agreements. Anyone who wants to reject that notion should understand that your alternative is the law of the jungle.

Even then, a lot of EULAs rely on the end user trusting the company to Do-the-right-thing(tm) and so people just scroll and click. The problem is, in that 90 pages of turgid legalese and latin you just scrolled though , theres a clause that sells the company your soul, your children and your dog.

Its sort of a exploit that relies on the fact that if your not a lawyer, trying to take in 90 pages of lawyertalk basically amounts to a stack-smash for the brain, the brain pre-emptively firewalls it and says "fing

Except most online agreements are not read even if agreed to. I just went to iTunes to grab a free song, and saw there was a new User Agreement. After clicking to get the "Printable version", copying and pasting into LibreOffice, it was 27 pages of 8 point type.

I'm sure there was something in there agreeing to transfer ownership of my soul.

Well, to a degree I can understand why. I grab just about every free app of the day, but they are almost never something I would pay for (even Swiftkey). I know many people who are like that because while the app may be great, at a normal price of $5+ there's no way in hell I'm buying it - but give it away for free and sure, I'll take it.

with the added sentence "No Royalty is payable for Apps with a List Price of $0.00." in Section 2(a).

Looking at the document (IANAL), that seems to refer to a permanently free app. If I understand it correctly, List Price is another term for MSRP (suggested retail price), and is not changed by Amazon when they choose to retail for $0.00.

On the other hand, it does say this: "A Royalty is due only for sales for which we have received final payment from or on behalf of an end user."

If I understand it correctly, List Price is another term for MSRP (suggested retail price), and is not changed by Amazon when they choose to retail for $0.00.

Except, as TFA makes clear enough, the publisher agreed to reduce the MSRP to $0.00 for a day in order to participate in the free app of the day promotion. Unfortunately, Amazon's software for app publishers is not as clear. In essence Amazon told them they would get $0.00. They asked if that was correct, and Amazon told them "Yes, you will get nothing". AFAICT, on they day their app was FAD, Amazon's app publishing site told them they would get $54,800. Rather than believe what they were told, they c

No, I do not think they changed that part. As you quoted they talk about a LIST PRICE of $0.00. The $0 Amazon charges for the app of the day is a promotional price. IMHO, the more relevant piece that justifies $0 payment is the next sentence: "A Royalty is due only for sales for which we have received final payment from or on behalf of an end user." Since the end user is not charged anything there are no royalties to be paid. This language has been in the agreement since the beginning, I think.

For each sale of an App, we will pay you a royalty ("Royalty") equal to the greater of (i) 70% of the purchase price or (ii) 20% of the List Price

Of course "List Price" becomes 0 when they do it as a Free App of the Day, unlike other times where they set the price at something below your list price.

The article isn't claiming that Amazon conned them out of their money, or that Amazon wasn't up front about them getting nothing for accepting to be the free app of the day. Their complaint is that impression before the make the offer is that if they make your app free you'll be getting 20% of the list still and t

Their complaint is that impression before the make the offer is that if they make your app free you'll be getting 20% of the list still and that's the impression amazon app store users have too.

The part that I emphasized seems to me to be the only issue of contention -- the supposed value of users believing that developers get 20% of list if they download an app for free. To a developer, these are people who don't want to pay you anything out of their own pocket. Their value is what, now?

The summary implies that the developers didn't know that they would get no money. The article makes it clear that they not only were told they would get nothing, but they confirmed in subsequent emails with Amazon that they would get nothing. Knowing this, they still decided to go ahead with the deal.

The Amazon emails have a good point:

The Free App of the Day promotion is the most valuable and visible spot in the store. It hosted the launch of the likes of Angry Birds Rio, Plants v. Zombies and more. Amazon will not receive any sales rev share from the Free App of the Day; and in fact, with as the Free of the Day for one day, you will receive a subsequent Appstore main page placement for the following 14 days.
All these highly valuable placements are at no cost to you. We want to promote your app and in exchange of the placements, at the 0% rev share for one day only.

Being "Free app of the day" is a huge advert for your app - and adverts have a cost. Being app of the day is optional - not mandatory - the developers in question could have said no. And the cost is not 101,491 copies of your app - that's RIAA accounting. The majority of downloaders will try your app once and then never use it again. Some may continue to use it, and when they do, if you're smart you'll figure out a way to monetise their usage (e.g. charge for version 2, offer premium feature updates etc.).

thanks to Amazon's secret back-door deals, we made $0 on that day.

Amazon also made $0 that day (from your app). You agreed to the deal. It gave your app enormous exposure. You didn't lose 101,491 sales, because the vast majority of those people would never have bought your app anyway.

Amazon also made $0 that day (from your app). You agreed to the deal. It gave your app enormous exposure. You didn't lose 101,491 sales, because the vast majority of those people would never have bought your app anyway.

To be fair, Amazon profited by using this "free app of the day" to attract people to the Amazon Appstore. I had always thought that the developer was profiting financially from Amazon when they offered an app as the free app of the day. Apparently, they do not compensate the developer except that they feature them on the main page and then give them priority placement for a week afterwards. However, they seem to be able to set the price to whatever they want for that week afterwards. The author says that th

The majority of downloaders will try your app once and then never use it again

Most the of the "Free App of the Day" applications I download never even get installed because, as far as I can tell, there is no way to see what permissions the app will need before "buying" it. I have a ton of stuff in "my apps" that I downloaded and refused to install when I saw the permission they wanted. Still haven't figured out how to remove something from that section either.

Yes, it was not fraud, nor does TFA imply that it was. They just wanted people to know what the actual deal is/was and to point out a few reasons why it may not be such a good deal for developers.

They also provided their experience that the "exposure" was more expensive than one might realize and that it may not help in the slightest, especially if Amazon decides that you get to be the $0.99 app right after.

Amazon also made $0 that day (from your app). You agreed to the deal. It gave your app enormous exposure. You didn't lose 101,491 sales, because the vast majority of those people would never have bought your app anyway.

Right, but they did have to upgrade their server hardware to deal with those 101,491 users they would

Right, but they did have to upgrade their server hardware to deal with those 101,491 users they wouldn't have had otherwise and they couldn't pay for it out of income from the app

I was really curious about this statement because it just didn't sound right. Why would a company choose to allow their item to be the "FAOTD" if they couldn't reasonable handle the demand? But, I did the unthinkable and RTFA and sure enough, they did mention server capacity as well as additional customer support for their app to the tune of "300 emails" that gave them "a headache".

But, you know what, I have to agree with the GP on this one, TFS makes it out to be that Amazon is the bad guy here but TBH i

They said it didn't help, and app sales went back to the 2 or 3 sales per day that they had before the promotion. They also wondered if every potential customer, who wanted their app, had already downloaded it for free.

Or a niche app. Not every application in the world is intended to be used by 6billion people for.. who knows what we all have in common. Never mind that any non-niche app probably already has 1000 clones to split the market with anyway.

Being "Free app of the day" is a huge advert for your app - and adverts have a cost. Being app of the day is optional - not mandatory - the developers in question could have said no. And the cost is not 101,491 copies of your app - that's RIAA accounting. The majority of downloaders will try your app once and then never use it again. Some may continue to use it, and when they do, if you're smart you'll figure out a way to monetise their usage (e.g. charge for version 2, offer premium feature updates etc.).

Name some other things of value that are advertised this way. Now exclude things people have to keep paying for like food and such.

hmmm...

The advertising cost does't seem fair to me. It should be restricted to first X visitors or time restricted demo, feature limited demo, or tied to the release of a sequel that makes it worthless.

You're giving the full value of your product per person away to advertise to arbitrarily large number of people who will _never_ convert into buying customers, and will use up y

Amazon, google, apple, microsoft and all the other big players control the market for apps. This is a very bad position for individual developers because it means that to get a foothold in the market, they need to be a part of one of them.

Is the moral of the story to read the contract, No. The moral is to stop feeding these companies and stop them from being able to command the market.

I really hope tech people realise this soon else we can safely say that we asked for this state of affairs to come about.

It is us as individuals that do all the innovating, not them, they just pick up our innovations and run away with them. They are leaches!

Yes! The app market was enormous before Apple's App Store. Those were the days, where armies of independent developers cold earn an honest living by making hordes of crazy innovative apps for cell phones.
Oh wait.. Those were not the days. There was no market to speak of before Apple's iPhone, and there were hardly no independent developers at all, since everyone who made any real money did commissioned work for carriers or cell phone makers.

It's called a website and developers have been doing this for many years now, and they keep 100% of their sale price (minus transaction fees). Nobody can stop you from doing that, and nobody is forcing you to distribute PC or Android applications through an app store. And if you don't like the ecosystems that force you to use an app store (e.g. iOS or Windows Phone), don't develop for those platforms.

The reason developers have been flocking to those evil, awful, soul-sucking app stores is because it turns o

They present one deal publicly, then renegotiate every Free App of the Day deal depending on whether or not they feel that the it is to Amazon's advantage. The Angry Birds get paid, the small local guy does not. This is predatory, though not illegal, and shows that they fundamentally misunderstand the ecosystem they need to foster in order for them to do well. If they were the only game in town, this might work for them, but they are not.

Of course. Amazon needs Angry Birds to draw people to the Amazon store. But they also need an app a day to keep em coming back and paying for A list titles to give away is expensive. So they also promote smaller apps that need the exposure Amazon can give them more than Amazon needs that particular app. It makes perfect economic sense once you examine who is gaining more from the transaction and notice that end is making more money up front. B

I see people posting about "free exposure" and that sort of thing. But this is only getting exposure for Amazon, who presumably wants to build a user- and application-base for their own upcoming Google-free Android devices.

See, advertising is about drawing attention and profiting when people purchase your product. Regular advertisements do this. Even sales do this. But giving your stuff away doesn't make you money. Any exposure you got was immediately lost to those exposed who either wanted your product or didn't even want it for nothing. Anyone who didn't see it wasn't exposed, and therefore doesn't matter, or worse, will pass on your app even on sale to just wait for the next "free" one. Why pay anything?

However having free stuff does net Amazon a lot of exposure and incentive for new customers. This will sell their devices and platform through exposure.

But giving your stuff away doesn't make you money. Any exposure you got was immediately lost to those exposed who either wanted your product or didn't even want it for nothing.

I don't know about software, but I've downloaded hundreds of free ebooks from Amazon and Smashwords and when they turned out to be good I've then bought other books by the same author for real money. In those cases that's money they would never have made if their book hadn't been free.

Being a free app of the day gets tens or hundreds of thousands of people to download and review your app. Unless it really sucks, the reviewers tend to be quite generous. Amazon guarantees a front page listing for your app for two weeks after that, and even after that point it will show up whenever someone sorts by downloads or ratings. If you and I both make a todo list app, and mine is the free app of the day at some point, then a year from now whenever someone searches the app store for "todo list" th

One drawback is Amazon allows you to download and install the app even if your phone is not compatible. This is because Amazon wants you to get a free copy of the app if you upgrade your phone or Android OS in the future.

However there is no warning of this to end users, so what ends up happening is random bugs or FC's which lead to poor reviews by uneducated users.

It can, but only if you plan for it. First, you have to have a second sale plan is. Second, you have to build a mechanism to make the second sale happen. For example, you could release a new version with more features people want and charge for the upgrade. You could use a bult in messaging feature to tell your customers about the upgrade or even another app in the future. Software makers have a deep history of finding ways to give it away for free, and the

Its a little disapointing they only printed stats for a few days before of sales and stopped at that they should have posted the after stats so we could see if the exposure they got was worth it as amazon tried to say it would be.

OK, you got a glass of unsweetened lemon juice. Here is how you put some sugar and water in to make it taste better:

Time to come out with a pay-only upgrade. You have 100,000 users. If you charge just $1, you have a chunk coming your way, depending on how many upgrade.

Done in one.

Oh, and this is why apps should always have a way for the developer to message the user with a link. This way if you get sick of the market that distributes your app, you can tell you users to "Get super awesome app 2 here (links to app store that isn't the one you are mad at)."

Finally, you can use the same in app message feature to tell your users about your other apps.

Or you can go sulk about your 100,000 user new customer base. It's up to you.

I think the main point of the developer is to clear up a misconception about Amazon's app store (which I also had until I saw this story). Many people assumed that Amazon would still pay the devs 20% of list even if it the free app of the day. Now that I know the nitty-gritty how it actually works I understand why it's actually 0%. If Amazon reduced the price w/o the dev's agreement, he would get 20%. In this case, though, the dev was asked if he wanted to see his app as free app of the day, i.e. you had to

I found it amusing, mostly because it reminds me of me years ago, when I was a naive developer. Now I'm more worldly, not necessarily wiser, very much more cynical and not trusting.

Even further down the author actually admits "As we said in our post, we deserved what we got, because we did indeed agree to it". Simply put, if they had asked the right question, and not beat around the bush, they would have gotten it explained.

They make this comment, which I found kind of snot nosed brat kind of comment, back to Amazon at the initial onset:

We’d be happy to reconsider if you decided to pay us the 20% that we agreed to in our original developer agreement, but this new one seems to favour only you, at the expense of us?

Amazon's response is:

... and in fact, with as the Free of the Day for one day, you will receive a subsequent Appstore main page placement for the following 14 days. All these highly valuable placements are at no cost to you. We want to promote your app and in exchange of the placements, at the 0% rev share for one day only.

Amazon never said they would get 20%. Matter of fact, Amazon emphasis that there is no expense to the developers to get potentially highly profitable placement.
Their actual technical complaints, slightly valid, accounts for about 7 bullet points, and 20 sentences. Their first technical point is rather naive. Assuming that Amazon would immediately post something is... well stupid. Just cause Google does it, does not mean Amazon is Google.

The developer's use of the words "expense" implied a different meaning to people in marketing and sales. The developer's point was that they would not make money and have costs of supporting the free sales. The marketing / sales / accounting people, think of expense as the cost of doing business. Grasshopper chose his words poorly.

The reality is they do not have enough business savvy. They hopefully will gain this over time.

Its always amusing to me cause in college, CS and Business Admin students mock each other. And yet when it comes to the real world, they both need knowledge from the others area of expertise.

Yes, and the article says that they saw this, asked Amazon about it, Amazon confirmed that it was 0, and they decided to do it anyway because they wanted more data points for their Android developing experiment. They didn't misread anything. They knew they were getting screwed, wanted to know how badly, and then wrote about it.

Stories like this have been circulating lately about sites like Groupon/Living Social, etc, where the company (Amazon in this case) promises the world as far as exposure and sales, but then when you sign up for the promotion, you discover that you lose money hand over fist, and the business doesn't really pick up on the back side of the promo. A lot of small businesses have gotten in trouble by signing up for stuff like this.

Seems to me these guys were testing Amazon to see if the same could happen there, and then reported that it can.

it's all about the "list price".. but you wouldn't think a SPECIAL SALE PRICE would affect the list price, right? Why else would Amazon have the flat 70% OR 20% of list if they choose to have a sale on the app? What's a situation where Amazon's price would be lower than list... and how would that ever be LOWER than the straight 70%? The whole paragraph dealing with that is nothing but funny business...

The underhanded bit is that they represent to the public that they compensate the devs for their work even when Amazon chooses to give it away for free, and then underhandedly tell the dev that he's not getting paid, and he's not allowed to tell anyone.

And apparently, since Amazon can set the prices on the apps, they have pretty good leverage to get away with it:

No, that isn't how it's supposed to work. On Amazon App Store, the developer is supposed to get either 70% of the sale price, or 20% of the asking price, i.e full price, whichever is higher. Amazon will often sell apps at a discount. That means if the list price for your app is $4.99, than amazon owes you at least $1, even if they decide to sell the app for $0.99. If they sell it at $4.99, you get $3.50. You are giving Amazon the right to set the selling price to whatever they want, in exchange for a small

So you don't think it's fishy how Amazon publicly advertises 20% even for free apps? And in the screenshot, Amazon told them they received $54,805.14 in earnings that day? As stated in the article's comments section, the terms are confusing and fuzzy.

So you don't think it's fishy how Amazon publicly advertises 20% even for free apps? And in the screenshot, Amazon told them they received $54,805.14 in earnings that day? As stated in the article's comments section, the terms are confusing and fuzzy.

Not to mention that it takes more effort to make them confusing and fuzzy than it would to make them simple and clear. While it proves nothing, it strongly suggests that this is intentional.

I think the confusion is the "0% revenue share" in APPLE Store talk that means the HOUSE cut would be 0%... so it SOUNDS like a good deal. Until you realize it's YOU that is getting the "revenue sharing"... for your OWN APP. I can see people wanting to try out Amazon.. for the sole purpose of it being "not Apple" and "not Google" but under terms like that there's just no way.

I think you're getting confused here. Apple keeps 30% of the revenue, and so does Amazon when an app is sold.

The difference is that Amazon will sometimes run a discount to push sales, but they say they give atleast 20% even if they're taking a loss on that(the article says it didn't apply to them). A big difference from what you said which seemed to indicated that Amazon is taking money

Apple offers 70% of the list price, with the list price being the developer's asking price.Amazon offers 70% of the list price, or 20% of the developer's asking price, whichever is greater.

If I make a $1 app and sell it in both Amazon's and Apple's app stores, I'll make 70 cents from each and Amazon/Apple make 30 cents. The difference is that Amazon reserves the right to sell my app for, say, 50 cents instead, in which case I only make 35 cents from that sale and they make 15

The difference between free and 0.01 is infinite. The sort of people who will come to the trough for a free download are not the sort who will pay money, unless there's something very, very special about the app.

In fact, giving it away (even for a day) can be harmful. It tells the people who did pay for it that they've been suckered. They are now lost customers if there's ever an updated version. They won't pay for that, they'll remember how they got shafted the first time and wait until it gets given aw

Speaking of which, it seems like you didn't RTFA, which states that Amazon publicly declares 20% to developers, even for free apps, but then sends an email saying it's actually 0% and that you're not allowed to publicly discuss it. That was followed by a list of other major problems with the store.

Even the usual Slashdot logic which predicts that giving away something for free is "free advertising" that somehow generates sales didn't happen in this situation. Fail all around.

l Slashdot logic which predicts that giving away something for free is "free advertising" that somehow generates sales didn't happen in this situation. Fail all around.

Unless its addictive the only thing you get by giving something away for free is that the receiver values it zero and expects you to continue to provide it for free.

I've gotten the "We're a big name so do the work for free and you'll be able to say you did x for us" to which I reply "How about you give all of your products for free and I'll tell everyone I know I use them?"

The summary implies that the developers didn't know that they would get no money. The article makes it clear that they not only were told they would get nothing, but they confirmed in subsequent emails with Amazon that they would get nothing. Knowing this, they still decided to go ahead with the deal.

The Amazon emails have a good point:

The Free App of the Day promotion is the most valuable and visible spot in the store. It hosted the launch of the likes of Angry Birds Rio, Plants v. Zombies and more. Amazon will not receive any sales rev share from the Free App of the Day; and in fact, with as the Free of the Day for one day, you will receive a subsequent Appstore main page placement for the following 14 days.
All these highly valuable placements are at no cost to you. We want to promote your app and in exchange of the placements, at the 0% rev share for one day only.

Being "Free app of the day" is a huge advert for your app - and adverts have a cost. Being app of the day is optional - not mandatory - the developers in question could have said no. And the cost is not 101,491 copies of your app - that's RIAA accounting. The majority of downloaders will try your app once and then never use it again. Some may continue to use it, and when they do, if you're smart you'll figure out a way to monetise their usage (e.g. charge for version 2, offer premium feature updates etc.).

thanks to Amazon's secret back-door deals, we made $0 on that day.

Amazon also made $0 that day (from your app). You agreed to the deal. It gave your app enormous exposure. You didn't lose 101,491 sales, because the vast majority of those people would never have bought your app anyway.

You can cross link by putting a link to the comment numbered link on the top right in this case #36966086 [slashdot.org].

Having said that, that post is totally beside the point. The way the deal is publicly presented makes it look like it's a good opportunity for developers. You get a chance to get some cash now and increase your installed base at the risk of some loss of full price sales. You also get good placement. That makes Amazon's app store more attractive for those developers.

The trick is that when you actually do get offered a free placement, then it turns out that the deal which is published is not the deal which is really available. By that time you have already committed to Amazon's app store so it is too late to back out. This looks to me like a bait and switch [wikipedia.org] situation which would be illegal for a consumer product sale.

It's important to note, that if you had Read The Fine Article Properly you would have seen that they went into this as an experiment and are publishing not to complain but to warn others. You would also have seen that Amazon stated that the promotion gives

"highly valuable placements"

but it turned out that the influence on app sales beyond the promotion was very small, possibly even negative.

Further note that, even when asked

If I read this correctly youâ(TM)d like to give away our application for free, and pay us nothing?

Amazon responded

We want to promote your app and in exchange of the placements, at the 0% rev share for one day only.

instead of just clearly stating that there would be no revenue. What does that mean? That Amazon will take 0% of the revenue? That the promotion will cost you 0% of the revenue or that you will get 0% of the revenue. Now, thanks to Shift Jelly's valuable posting, we know exactly.

The developers were told that they'd get no income from the giveaway.The developers asked Amazon for confirmation that they'd get no money.Amazon responded that yes, they would get no money.The developers decided to give their app away regardless.The developers were upset that they then got no money.The developers decided to bitch and moan about it.

Cry me a river.

And where is the evidence that they didn't see increased sales from this? Where is the evidence that Amazon refuses to let developers publicly discuss the terms -- especially considering that this dev is publicly discussing the terms?

The developers were told that they'd get no income from the giveaway.The developers asked Amazon for confirmation that they'd get no money.Amazon responded that yes, they would get no money.The developers decided to give their app away regardless.The developers were upset that they then got no money.The developers decided to bitch and moan about it.

They thought it was a raw deal afterwards, came to their conclusion and quit the Amazon Store. Then they issued a nice article warning others and explaining their reasons. What's not to like ?

And where is the evidence that they didn't see increased sales from this? Where is the evidence that Amazon refuses to let developers publicly discuss the terms -- especially considering that this dev is publicly discussing the terms?

RTFA : "Did the exposure count for much in the days afterwards? That’s also a big no, the day after saw a blip in sales, followed by things going back to exactly where we started, selling a few apps a day." Also they added a graph of sales to the article as proof (see update 2 in TFA)

Where is the evidence that Amazon refuses to let developers publicly discuss the terms -- especially considering that this dev is publicly discussing the terms?

You want proof people are being told not to discuss the terms from the people who are being told not to discuss them but doubt the person who did come forward ?Let Amazon issue a clear denial.

Amazon never really said that they'd give developers 20% of their asking price on the free app day.

Here's a recap of how Amazon's app store works:The developer sets an asking price, X.Amazon comes up with their own price, Y.Customers pay Y.Amazon pays the developer 0.2X or 0.7Y, whichever is greater.

Now, you could look at this and say, "Aha! On the free app day, they're just lowering Y to $0. I should get 20% of X!" But this would clearly be a hugely losing proposition for Amazon, and they never say that

Instead, they get your agreement to lower X to $0 on that day. Neither you nor they make any money on "sales" that day. But you both get publicity.

At no point were they dishonest about how the free app day works. No rational person should expect Amazon to be giving away tens of millions of dollars a year. The devs knew full well what they were getting into. They were looking for an excuse to bash Amazon.

No no no. Amazon were being dishonest right from the word go, because the developers' agreement states that if you are selected for Free App of the Day, you get that 0.2X. This is the only publicised figure for FAD. Well it would appear that this is a bait-and-switch, because they "renegotiate" it down to zero at the drop of a hat. As this is designed to draw developers into the market place, it sounds like grounds for a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit. (Of course, only people who refused the

A company Amazon's size shouldn't have issues in clearly communicating the terms of the deal. Every email was poorly worded, and then they turned around and showed a profit of 54K when none was actually there. This smacks of the same sort of deals that record companies make. They prey on the new artists who need exposure and don't realize their own worth.

Making excuses from Amazon doesn't change the fact that it's a dirty tactic.

The article is about the fact that Amazon advertises that they're paying 20% for each app in "Free App Of The Day" promotion, but in fact they're paying 0% because they've made a deal behind the curtains. Yes, they've accepted the deal, no argument about that.

The really sad thing is they probably could sell this app for a long time, they'd continuously get small amounts of money from it and maybe the app would grow over time (good supported app is worth the money). But now they have nothing, because everyone interested already has the app, so they probably won't get even the small amount of money from it.

Not really. I pretty much hate all thing Apple these days, but as an developer that has an app for sale on both Android and iOS told me (on LinuxTag even), one of the big stumbling blocks he has encountered with Android:

- When you sell an app in the Apple store Apple handles sales tax and all other applicable paperwork in the country of sale, you can sell your app worldwide by placing it in one app store, and you only have to deal with one accounting contact.

So it's pretty easy to sell internationally with the Apple Store, but when you want to sell something on Android you have to sell at least a few dozen or even hundreds of apps per country to even break even the cost of filing the taxes in that country.

Or do what I and most businesses do... and don't worry about it until sales are high enough to warrant it.

Are you really seriously worried as a US citizen that Italy is going to send international tax lawyers to harass you over $9 in app sales to that country

Amazon is being predatory here, and asking developers (who are often desperate for exposure) to give away their app, in order to promote Amazon. A heated debate broke out in our office about whether we should or not.

It was clear that they understood that they were being asked to "give away their app".

Well, you never know how these things are going to turn out. Yes, Amazon is going to tell you what a great idea it is. Heck, I'll send you an e-mail telling you that I have hundreds of twitter followers and if you give me a free copy of your app and I like it, I'll promote it. It might work out. It might not.

There might be times when this is a good idea. If you're planning on shipping version 2--a paid upgrade--in six months, then it might be worthwhile to take the hit and make some money in upgrade fe

By that logic, there shouldn't be a market for anything in print, artwork, music, movies, or anything else that can be digitally replicated. You're using the cover story of someone who downloads music for free, then rationalizes that somehow word of mouth will convince your friends to pay for what you just downloaded for free.

You mean you need a lawyer for everything? washing a car, eating a donut, doing basic math etc.?

Becaue the article is not about law or signing a contract. It's about the fact that Amazon describes the promotion as "20% for the developers" but in reality they make deals with the developers so that they pay them 0%. Yes, both sides obviously have enough brain cells to be responsible for their actions, so it's their fault they've signed the deal. But the article is not a whining about this - it's a warning to

You should read the article. They did in fact understand it and followup up to verify the information. They only went through with it for the hell of it since taking part in the android platform was an experiment.

Um, no moderations are subject to meta-moderation any more. Meta-moderation is actually just a random sample of posts you get to moderate unaccountably. Try it some time - you get ten posts and you get to either +1 or -1 them. It's just yet another thing Slashdot fucked up.

Actually, if you tried to tell Google that, they'd look at you funny. Then after thinking about it a while, they'd say "ooohhhh, you're illiterate! How precious! You need to talk to Amazon about that, they're the guys you're selling through".